Call Her Savage

1932. USA. Directed by John Francis Dillon. Screenplay by Edwin J. Burke. With Clara Bow, Gilbert Roland, Thelma Todd. Pre-Production Code movies don’t come any crazier—or less tasteful. Silent star Clara Bow’s full-talking comeback features one jaw-dropping scene after another, including a prologue in which a bit of hanky-panky in a Texas-bound Conestoga wagon precipitates an Indian attack; a crazed hophead rising from his deathbed to rape the screeching heroine; and a much anthologized sequence set in a Greenwich Village gay bar favored by “wild poets and anarchists.” In continual danger of bursting out of her dress, Bow herself is a constant motion machine—jumping, gesticulating, and rough housing with her dog. Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation and Turner Classic Movies. 88 min.

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